The First 100 Days: What Clinton And Trump Want To Get Done

By:

Scott Horsley

Imagine for a moment that it's Jan. 21, 2017. After a chilly inauguration the day before, the parades and festivities have ended. And the new president of the United States is ready for his or her first day of work.

"What follows is my 100-day action plan to make America great again," Donald Trump told supporters in Gettysburg, Pa., last weekend. "First I will announce my intention to totally renegotiate NAFTA, one of the worst deals our country has ever made."

Trump also promised to withdraw from a proposed Asia-Pacific trade deal that's been in the works. Both those moves would be well within the new president's authority.

"As a general matter, if the president wants to withdraw from a treaty, he simply gets to do that," said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "That's part of the powers of the office."

Trump would also have the power to deport more than 2 million criminals in the country without documentation, halt immigration from parts of the world he calls "terror prone," and quickly reverse many of the initiatives undertaken by President Obama.

"If you're an administration that lives by the executive order, than you're going to die by the executive order, too," said Stephen Moore, an economic adviser to Trump. He expects Trump would act almost immediately to reverse the power plant rules at the heart of Obama's climate agenda, as well as Obama's orders governing immigration enforcement and overtime pay.

"You could literally have a stack of executive orders on Donald Trump's desk in the Oval Office that he could sign literally in his first hours of being president," Moore said. "And that would be in many cases, I think, an enormous lift to the economy."

Other parts of Trump's agenda would require support from a friendly Republican Congress. Those include Trump's massive tax cut, the repeal of Obamacare, and that big new wall along the border with Mexico.

"Don't worry about it," Trump assured supporters. "Mexico is paying for the wall. With the full understanding that Mexico will be reimbursing the United States for the full cost of such a wall."

Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has her own road map for the first hundred days if she winds up in the White House.

"We're not going to build a giant wall," Clinton said. "We're going to build roads and bridges and tunnels and ports and airports and water systems and a new electric grid."

Clinton told supporters in Johnstown, Pa., over the summer she'll also pursue immigration reform and big new investments in clean power.

"Within the first hundred days of our administration, we are going to break the gridlock in Washington and make the biggest investment in good-paying jobs since World War II," Clinton said.

Most of Clinton's plans would require congressional support. And that would test the former secretary of state's negotiating skills, since the House of Representatives at a minimum is expected to remain in Republican hands.

"She was a fairly successful legislator," recalled former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. "And her husband was just very good at working with a Republican Congress. She's got that in her background. But remember, the world has changed since that time."

Washington, like the rest of the country, has grown more polarized. And either Clinton or Trump will face strong political headwinds from the very first day in office.

"Remember this," Davis said. "The president, whoever it is, will come in with a high negative — probably close to 55 percent unfavorable view. That's not the traditional kind of mandate."

Even if there's no traditional "honeymoon," though, whoever sits in the Oval Office will still wield considerable power, starting with the nomination of a new Supreme Court justice.

Presidents generally try to deliver on campaign promises — and in many cases they succeed. So like them or not, voters should take these pledges seriously.

"When somebody promises to do something, you have to think about whether that's something you'd be willing to see happen," said Wittes, the Brookings Institution scholar. "Because the powers are simply too vast and too dangerous to say, 'Well, he was probably clowning around at that point or he doesn't know what he's saying.'"

Upcoming Events

The Retro Cocktail Hour's Cinema a Go-Go series returns to Liberty Hall with a night of extraterrestrial bad guys! Our big double feature has two of the original "alien invasion" movies of the early 1950s, including Howard Hawks' production of the original The Thing From Another World (1951) and low budget auteur Edgar G. Ulmer's The Man From Planet X(1951).

Will Earth survive? Join us and find out at Cinema a Go-Go - and be sure to enter our intermission giveaway when we'll be handing out all manner of otherworldly goodies from the RCH Warehouse.

Join us at Liberty Hall in downtown Lawrence, Friday, October 20. Tickets are $8, available at the doors, which open at 6:30 p.m.

You can buy reserved seats on the floor, either as a table of 10 ($300), a table of 4 ($120), or individual reserved seats ($30). Seating in the balcony is general admission and run $20 a ticket. The dance floor will be open to balcony and floor seating. A service charge may be added to your order. Tickets are available at the Liberty Hall box office or ticketmaster.com. Tickets will also be available the night of the concert. The Liberty Hall ticket office is cash only.

Ron Gutierrez joins the fun again this year. His rich, soulful vocals and vast repertoire have led to performances alongside such artists as Michael McDonald, Wynonna Judd, Rita Moreno and B.B. King, as soloist with The National Symphony Orchestra and during national television appearances on such shows as “Showtime at the Apollo” and numerous PBS concerts.

Kathleen Holeman has been performing for more than 20 years as a solo act, sideman and leader of jazz groups of all sizes. She’s led the Ray Alburn Big Band since June 2007. She’s been a private music teacher for 20 years and on the faculty at Missouri Western State University since 2008.

Formed in 2003, the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra brings many of the region's greatest jazz musicians together to perform big band jazz in a concert setting. The KCJO is under the direction of Clint Ashlock, Kansas City native and trumpeter.

Description: Celebrate the launch of the sun and her flowers, the long awaited second collection of poetry from Rupi Kaur, the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of milk and honey. Rupi Kaur’s new softcover the sun and her flowers and one admission ticket is included with each Admission Package Purchase. Admission packages are $28.50 plus applicable fees, and go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, September 15. Tickets will be available through the Kauffman Center Box Office at (816) 994-7222, via the Kauffman Center mobile app, or online at www.kauffmancenter.org. Kaur views her life as an exploration of that artistic journey. She published her first collection of poems, milk and honey, in 2014. The internationally acclaimed collection sold well over a million copies, gracing the New York Times bestsellers list every week for over a year. It has since been translated into over thirty languages. Kaur’s long-awaited second collection, the sun and her flowers, will be released in October 2017. Through this collection Kaur continues to explore a variety of themes including love, loss, trauma, healing, femininity, migration and revolution. The event is presented in partnership Andrews McMeel Universal and Rainy Day Books. More information and tickets: http://tickets.kauffmancenter.org/single/eventDetail.aspx?p=12966 Submitted by: Eliza Scott Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts